Rotary gates 10 of the kind shown in FIG. 1 are employed to provide secured entry and exits and can be regularly seen at such venues as public transportation stations. The gate can rotate bi-directionally within the cage assembly so that when permitted to rotate in a first direction it can accommodate entry to the secured location, and when rotating in the opposite direction allows exit. Often entry is only initiated upon a payment of some kind by a customer or a patron engaging a user interface with some payment form ranging from cash, credit card, smart card or other, which is recognized as an authentic payment form to authorize entry. Typically the user interface will include a Media Information Display (MID) that will confirm acceptance of proper payment in response to a card swipe and display a state condition of the rotary gate so that the customer is informed of the gate's state and conformance with the intended operation such as entry.
A particular problem with such rotary gates, especially in heavy traffic customer locations, is that interfering and conflicting exit and entry customer actions can cause the gate to lock up against customer passage, and further may cause improper cancellation of a proper payment by an entering customer. More particularly, there is a scenario where a rotary gate entry request would cause a contemporaneous exit rotation to lock midway through the cycle resulting in the exiting customer having to back out the rotary gate to allow the paid and entering customer to enter. Worse still, this would also mean that the entry request would be canceled during the backout of the exiting customer even though the payment had been properly collected and so indicated by the MID. The entering customer has to repay to enter.
With particular reference to FIGS. 2A-2D, top planar views of the rotary gate 10 are shown in section to illustrate the problem. In FIG. 2A the exiting customer 20 is seen to be exiting the station secured by the rotary gate 10. The gate is shown in a “home position” where the bars 12 are disposed so that a metal cam flag 13 (FIG. 5) is adjacent home sensor 14 and the “home sensor is made.” An entry customer 22 approaches the gate 10 (FIG. 2B) and engages the entry MID 16 with a payment card by swiping it at the entry MID. A rotary gate controller (not shown) comprising a software and hardware processor component of the MID 16 recognizes payment and sends a signal to authorize gate entry operation. However, the entry swipe has occurred at about the same time that the exiting customer 20 has already entered the cage and started to push the gate bars 12 away from the home sensor position 14, such as can be seen in FIG. 2B (Arrow 9), however the home sensor is still made. The gate is just about to enter an exit state by the action of the exiting customer as the gate has physically started to move away from the home position for an exit rotation, but importantly because the home sensor is still made, it has not yet entered the exit state. There has not yet been a signal from sensor 14 to the rotary gate controller of rotation in an exit direction by the cam flag 13 moving away from home sensor 14 and towards the direction sensor for exit rotation 18. In response to the entry customer payment swipe, the MID sends an entry request to the gate assembly thereby causing the exit solenoid and latch mechanism 60 (FIG. 6) to be energized (locked) while the entry solenoid and latch mechanism 62 is de-energized (unlocked). In FIG. 2C it can be seen that the gate is permitted to rotate a partial cycle until the bar 12 is precluded from further rotation by the exit solenoid and latch mechanism 60. The exiting customer can then only move backwards and thus will be required to move back (Arrow 7) to the exit side of the rotary gate to exit while pushing bar 11 and then allow the entering customer to enter the cage pursuant to the entry request. The entering customer 22 has to wait until the exiting customer 20 exits the cage assembly before being allowed to enter such as is shown in FIG. 2D. Unfortunately the already occurring entry rotation of the gate during the back-out of the exiting customer causes the MID to process the entry request made by the entering customer 22 and the request is then canceled by the partial entry rotation of the backing up exiting customer. The MID is unaware of this “false entry” and takes no action. The entering customer 22 who is trying to enter and has paid is now blocked from entering the rotary gate 10 and must repay at the MID in order to gain entry. The exiting customer 20 has been precluded from exiting the station and must now wait for the entering customer 22 to re-swipe the MID, push and rotate the gate to gain entry and then allow the gate to return to an exiting allowed state. In busy times with many customers at both sides of the gate such a failure in proper processing can cause significant delay and dissatisfaction to customers.